Kolkata Quotes

“West Bengal”

“jal, juochuri, mithye katha
ei tin niye kalikata.”

“Wikipedia: Kolkata”

“Wikivoyage: Kolkata”

“Wikicommons: Kolkata”

“Wiktionary: Kolkata”

“Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.”

“Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.””

“‘Kali’ means “Kalichun” (a kind of lime produced from local snail shells) and ‘kata’ implies heaps of burnt shells. Thus, Kolkata has got its name from the manufacture of shell lime or Kalichun.”

“Kolkata is a great city, has great food and great people. We had some problems finding the kind of old buildings we were looking for, and even handling the crowds, but on the whole it was fun shooting there.”

“The New Howrah Bridge was re-christened as the Rabindra Setu in the year 1965, in the honour of the country's first Nobel laureate Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore.”

“There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.””

“Calcutta is by far the richest city in India, even though its various problems have started to turn its richness into a collapsing wealth. It is possibly the richest city anywhere between Rome and Tokyo in terms of the money that is accumulated and represented here.”

“When Calcutta was attacked by Siraj ud-Daulah in 1756, the city was too valuable to abandon and a few months later Robert Clive retook Calcutta and defeated Siraj-ud-daulah at the Battle of Plassey.”

“Even their enemies admit their courtesy, and a generous Britisher sums up his long experience by ascribing to the higher classes in Calcutta “polished manners, clearness and comprehensiveness of understanding, liberality of feeling, and independence of principle, that would have stamped them gentlemen in any country in the world.””

“Thus the midday halt of Charnock – more’s the pity! -
Grew a City
As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed
So it spread
Chance-directed, chance-erected, laid and built
On the silt
Palace, byre, hovel – poverty and pride
Side by side
And above the packed and pestilential town
Death looked down.”

“To countless Indians, and for most people familiar with India, the singularly unique name Chowringhee immediately identifies with Calcutta. It represents the nearest equation in India to what Piccadilly is to London, Fifth Avenue to New York and the Champs Elysees to Paris. Nostalgic Londoners like to regard their Circus as the centre of the universe. Calcuttans are more reserved in their acclaim, although the fervour they display for their city is perhaps unmatched.”

“Take your map of India, and find, if you can, a more uninviting spot than Calcutta. Placed in the burning plain of Bengal, on the largest delta of the world, amidst a network of sluggish, muddy streams, in the neighbourhood of the jungles and marshes of the Sunderbands, and yet so distant from the open sea as to miss the benefits of the breeze… it unites every condition of a perfectly unhealthy situation. The place is so bad by nature that human efforts could do little to make it worse.”

“Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which nevertheless survive in the memory of generations as the only chronicle of the past. It is as if the people who inhabit the streets, inspired by some mysterious wisdom, relalise that the true history of Calcutta has always been written in the invisible tales of its spirits and unspoken curses.””

“The great thoroughfare, which commencing in the extreme south, assumes the various names of Russa Road, Chowringhee Road, Bentick Street, Chitpore Road, and Barrackpore Trunk Road, forms a continuation of the Dum Dum Road and was the old line of communication between Morshedabad and Kalighat. It is said to occupy the site of the old road made by the Sabarna Roy Choudhurys, the old zemindars of Calcutta, from Barisha, where the junior branch resided, to Halisahar, beyond Barrackpore, which was the seat of the senior branch.”